


302, I Love You

by paintedrecs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, M/M, Meet-Cute, Neighbors AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-21 10:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12455307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: It was a beautiful summer morning—mid-70s with a light breeze, ideal weather for soaking up the sun without fear of overheating. If anyone asked, that was why Stiles was sitting on his balcony with a book he hadn’t touched in the last half hour and a mug of coffee he’d been absently sipping from, his gaze fixed on the parking lot several stories below.Coincidentally, one of his neighbors—Hot Dude From 302, not that it was relevant—had chosen the same morning to wash his stupidly flashy Camaro.





	302, I Love You

**Author's Note:**

> [Can also be found on tumblr.](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/post/166849072345/302-i-love-you)

It was a beautiful summer morning—mid-70s with a light breeze, ideal weather for soaking up the sun without fear of overheating. If anyone asked, that was why Stiles was sitting on his balcony with a book he hadn’t touched in the last half hour and a mug of coffee he’d been absently sipping from, his gaze fixed on the parking lot several stories below.

Coincidentally, one of his neighbors—Hot Dude From 302, not that it was relevant—had chosen the same morning to wash his stupidly flashy Camaro. Stiles wasn’t _watching_ him. He was sitting on his balcony, which happened to face the back parking lot, and Hot Dude happened to be in his general line of sight. And anyway, if he _had_ been watching him, it was only to document the details of his flagrant lease-breaking activities, in case Stiles decided to file a complaint with their landlord. 

Washing vehicles in their parking lot was explicitly against the rules, along with smoking, loud parties after 11 PM, and leaving trash bags in the hallway for people to potentially trip over, rather than dragging them all the way to the dumpsters—which were also located in their parking area.

If pressed, Stiles might admit that he’d broken the latter two rules once or twice. And that there might be an overstuffed trash bag sitting in the hallway at this very moment—deposited there because the smell had started to bug him, but not enough to motivate him to put on shoes and non-pj pants and make the trek downstairs. But that was more like rule- _bending_. It wasn’t an egregious violation like the unnecessarily thorough car washing that took place every Saturday, like clockwork.

Obviously this guy wasn’t originally from California, or he’d know how important water conservation was, and how much his utterly unacceptable behavior made everyone else in the building grind their teeth. Beacon Hills was in the middle of a fucking drought. And there 302 was, spraying water not only over the car’s sleek black surface, but over himself, too, making his loose shorts cling to his thighs, his already too-tight white tank top plastering against his chest and abs.  

What was the point of even _wearing_ a shirt to begin with if he was just going to get it soaked through every time, leaving the fabric offensively sheer?

“So you want him to take his shirt off for you,” Stiles's supposed best friend Scott said, kicking his feet up on the railing and crunching through a handful of pretzels.

“Shut up!” Stiles hissed. He instinctively tried to duck down in his lounge chair—as if that would accomplish anything—but 302 didn’t seem to have heard the exchange. He was too busy stretching across the hood, his back to them, the fabric of his wet shorts leaving little to Stiles’s admittedly very active imagination.

“You’re drooling,” Scott said. “This is kinda gross. I thought we were gonna be watching cartoons, not this guy’s ass.”

Stiles spluttered indignantly, then, when Scott motioned at his face, wiped away the possibly-drool from his chin. That happened sometimes when he was tired, okay? He hadn’t had enough of his coffee yet this morning. “I’m judging him,” he insisted. He firmly shut his mouth and twisted it into his most convincingly judgmental face.

“Judging whether you can get into his pants,” Scott said. 

“Judging him for...not knowing how to use his hose,” Stiles countered, scrambling for a reasonable comeback.

Scott was, thankfully, silent for a bit. He popped more pretzels into his mouth and chewed while staring at Stiles meaningfully. Eventually, he concluded, “So you wanna teach him how to use his hose.”

302 suddenly swore loudly from down below, and Stiles jerked in his chair, nearly knocking his coffee—and himself—over. Once he’d made sure his mug and limbs were safe, he leaned forward to see what had happened. 

Point proved, really. 302 had somehow sprayed himself right in the face with the hose, which required a special sort of uncoordinated talent that even Stiles didn’t possess. Scott was right; the guy clearly _did_ need some hose-handling lessons. He was dripping wet, his dark hair flattened, leaving it almost as shiny and black as his car. Even from this distance, Stiles could see the water streaming off the sharp cut off his cheekbones.

Despite all that, the idiot hadn’t shut the hose _off_ —he was just standing there, frozen in place, holding it as water arced into the air, the spray catching the sunlight in a miniature, shimmering rainbow.

He looked absolutely pitiful. Stiles almost felt bad for him. At the same time, though: “You remember that fountain by the library?”

Scott nodded. Of course he did. It’d been major drama when they were starting middle school; the local PTA had campaigned to have it torn out, claiming it was “inappropriate” for a public building to house a lifesize reproduction of The Birth of Venus. The sculptor’s argument—that it was a classic work of art that could be found in multiple books within the library itself—eventually toppled under the ire of parents with too much time on their hands.

Stiles had mourned its loss, taking art classes throughout high school with the vague idea of using his inevitable fame to battle similarly misguided attempts at censorship. As it turned out, he had no artistic skill, and he’d gradually found better channels for his righteous indignation. He was wondering now, though, if his bisexual awakening would’ve happened sooner if Venus had been replaced by something like...Eros. Or by a recreation of the tableau currently spread out below him. He would’ve spent a lot of time studying by _that_ fountain during his teenage years.

“I should take the trash out,” he decided abruptly.

Scott moved his legs so Stiles could clamber over him and back into his studio’s compact living room. “So I should just go home, then?” he called after Stiles.

Stiles was too busy pulling on presentable pants, twisting in front of the mirror, then switching to his tighter jeans, to reply. He was cramming his feet into his shoes when Scott came inside.

“You might as well take this,” Scott said, shaking the now-empty bag of pretzels in front of Stiles’s face. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“You don’t have to leave,” Stiles grunted, tying off his shoelaces and grabbing the crinkly bag as he stood. 

“I really think I do,” Scott said. “Good luck. Please don’t text me any details.”

“I’m not going to hit on him,” Stiles grumbled after Scott rudely slammed the door on his way out. He _wasn’t_. Mostly because his knowledge of 302 boiled down to a few key facts:

     -  Overcompensating (that car, c’mon)  
     -  Environmentally unfriendly  
     -  Antisocial (Stiles had never seen him interacting with anyone, and the majority of their neighbors were annoyingly friendly; most of them had shown up, uninvited, to his last after-11 PM party. Which Stiles had _definitely_ not thrown hoping that 302 would be among the attendees. He’d only posted the sign by the mailboxes as a courtesy notice, not an invitation. Technically.)

Perhaps most importantly, according to those same mailboxes, 302 was living with someone named “Laura Hale.” It was the only name listed, and although Stiles had snooped on the various packages that were too big to fit inside, he hadn’t managed to uncover any additional details. He _had_ lurked in the entryway for long enough to see a beautiful dark-haired woman collect one of those boxes, which had smashed the final hope he’d deny he’d been harboring.

Expecting a guy like that to _not_ have an equally hot girlfriend to ferry around in his douchey car? Dream on, Stiles.

He attempted to crumple the pretzel remnants—something he’d been planning to eat himself, thanks a lot Scott—into the trash bag, which only resulted in squeezing out a mess of banana peels and coffee-stained paper towels. Okay, maybe that rule existed for a reason, too. He sighed, wiped his hands off on his jeans, and heaved the bag up, beginning the trudge down to the garbage bins.

Once outside the building, Stiles stepped gingerly over the sudsy water snaking along the pavement, thumped the dumpster lid loudly enough to announce his presence, then oh-so-casually headed over to check on his Jeep, which was parked two spaces away from 302’s current location. Their building had unassigned spots—too few for the number of residents, leaving the rest to park out on the street. That created a headache sometimes, but it’d allowed Stiles—after some careful planning and light bribery—to set up this accidental meeting.

302 glanced at Stiles when he passed by, then fumbled his hose, spraying himself again.

“Wow,” Stiles said, attempting to hop out of the way, grimacing when that movement sent him splashing right into a puddle. “You have a serious problem, dude.”

“Sorry,” 302 said, in a soft voice that Stiles could barely hear over the water’s relentlessly wasteful flow. Now that Stiles was closer to his elusive neighbor, he was able to see the red shading those marble-carved cheekbones; he’d probably been out in the sun for too long, considering himself too manly to reapply sunscreen.

The thought brought back a sudden flash of memory: an afternoon in late summer; a sprinkler hissing in circles as Stiles jumped through the cool, stinging spray; a dark-haired boy laughing, the silver glint of his braces catching the sun as Stiles tried to flick water in his direction, convincing him to join the fun. Stiles’s mom had come outside then, _tsk_ ing at him in feigned disapproval, then calling them both over for a fresh coating of smelly, sticky sunscreen that Stiles would immediately do his best to wash off.

 _Scott_ , Stiles thought, then: _No. He hadn’t moved to Beacon Hills yet._ That was when Stiles was younger, when his best friend was a quiet boy who’d always said—despite Stiles’s constant attempts to get him into trouble—that the Stilinski household was a lot more peaceful than his. He’d liked Stiles’s mom’s cookies, his dad’s stories about work, and—Stiles liked to think, anyway—Stiles’s magnetic personality.

“Derek,” he said aloud, and 302 jumped.

“What?”

“Sorry, I was just—” Stiles shook his head. Why was he thinking of Derek now? The guy had moved away ages ago. They’d exchanged letters for a few months, then Scott had moved to town, Stiles had started spending a lot more time noticing girls, and the letters had stopped.

302 was still staring at him, his multicolored—mostly green?—eyes wide. Looking at him for too long was making Stiles feel weird, like there was something pressing at the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite grasp.

“You should be wearing sunglasses,” Stiles said stupidly. The bright light reflecting off the pavement was making _him_ squint, and he’d been out there for less than five minutes.

“You’re not,” 302 said.

“My eyes are darker; more melanin means better protection,” Stiles automatically countered—it was an argument he’d often used as a know-it-all kid who didn’t want to stop playing outside—then tried to restrain his wince. He was being obvious. You didn’t start out a totally innocent conversation with a hot stranger by talking about his eye color, for fuck’s sake.

But 302 smiled. He had front teeth that were a little too big for his mouth—something that he might’ve been teased about when he was younger, because he immediately ducked his head and rolled his lips together, pressing them into a line that didn’t hide the equally endearing dimples in his cheeks.

 _Damn_ , Stiles thought. The guy was supposed to be kind of a dick. Not...this. Maybe he avoided hanging out with over-friendly neighbors because he was shy? Stiles had to mentally readjust his entire battle plan, which had mostly involved snarky commentary and a few clever innuendoes designed to test whether he really _was_ taken.

“I was gonna ask you to wash my car,” Stiles said, plunging after his first thought, but unable to resist a slight dig. “While you’re wasting all that water.”

“Oh,” 302 said. His smile dimmed; even the curve of the hose seemed dejected suddenly. He released his tight grip on the spray attachment, the noise in the parking lot fading to the hum of bees in the hedge next door and the metallic creak of swings from the playground down the street. “I guess I could. It’s the Jeep, right?”

“Um,” Stiles said. “Yes. How did you know that?”

302 slid his hand down the hose, like he was planning to start rolling it back up, even though there were still suds on the Camaro’s roof. “It looks like your mom’s,” he said. “I remember you always used to say you wanted a car just like it, once you found out ordinary citizens couldn’t get Batmobiles.”

“How the—” Stiles stared at him. This was new. He hadn’t had a stalker before; at least, not that he’d known.

302 met his gaze for a few seconds, then looked away, his mouth twisting—in disappointment, weirdly, if Stiles was reading that expression correctly. “You don’t remember me, do you.”

“Should I?” Stiles asked. Maybe he’d hooked up with the guy and forgotten him, but that seemed incredibly unlikely. He’d remember a jawline like that. And why the hell would they have spent the night talking about Stiles’s childhood? He didn’t get that personal in relationships until...well, he’d always figured he’d start digging into the really gritty stuff at about the year marker, and no one had ever lasted that long.

“I guess not,” 302 said. “It’s been a long time. Laura said you wouldn’t and that I should get over myself and be the first one to say something. I was trying to work up the nerve, but then, just now, when you...”

He trailed off, so Stiles repeated it. “When I what?”

“When you said my name,” 302 said. “I...didn’t imagine that, did I?”

Stiles looked at him again, like he was seeing him for the first time. That’s what he’d thought this encounter _was_ , but...he traced his gaze over the guy’s inky black hair, drying in the sunlight and beginning to wave slightly at the tips; the delicate curves of his ears, which somehow seemed a little smaller than they should be; the unusual color of his eyes.

“Derek,” Stiles said slowly, pulling that memory back to the forefront, the hazy image of his friend overlaying 302’s features. He had to make significant adjustments for puberty and an apparent explosion of late-blooming attractiveness, but: “ _Hale_. Oh my god. Laura’s your _sister_. The scary older one you never wanted us to hang out with. How did I not make that connection?”

“It’s a common name,” Derek said. “Not like Stilinski. It was a lot easier for me to connect the dots.” 

“Goddamn,” Stiles said. “Good thing my dad talked me out of joining the force. I would’ve been a shitty detective.”

“I doubt that,” Derek said, as generous as he’d been when they were kids. He had so many of the same mannerisms, now that Stiles was paying attention. “I look a little different than I used to.”

Stiles snorted before he could consider whether that was rude. That brought up a sudden, unsettling thought. “Wait, does that mean I _don’t_?”

As a kid, Stiles had been 80% eyes and mouth, and always a head shorter than the other boys his age. He’d hit his growth spurt late in high school, then shot up to six feet during college, but if his face was still that recognizable...

Derek was shaking his head. “I told you, I saw your name. A few weeks after we moved in.” He hesitated, then added, “But I think I would’ve recognized you anyway. You’ve changed, but there’s something...”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. He felt it, too. He’d first seen Derek about a month ago—or so he’d thought at the time—and had nearly been bowled over by the degree of instantaneous attraction. It wasn’t just the physical part, although that was undeniable. It was the sense that something about Derek felt _right_. Familiar, almost. He’d thought stupid things, like maybe soulmates weren’t as outlandish as he’d always assumed. Turned out all it’d meant was that some part of his brain was still connected to those old memories of Derek.

He tried not to let the disappointment wash over him. This was cool, too. It’d be fun to reconnect, to revisit the old times, like: he flushed suddenly, another long-forgotten image drifting out of the past. He touched his lips without thinking, remembering the dry press of Derek’s mouth against his, the brilliant green of his eyes as he pulled back, mouth still parted, looking terrified that Stiles would laugh at him.

“I just...wanted to try that. Before...” Derek had said. Then, before Stiles had any time to react or process it, Derek had revealed that his family was leaving town. He was gone the next week.

The red along Derek’s cheekbones was darkening. So he remembered it, too. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you think...” He started to turn away, coiling the hose in abrupt, jerky movements, like he was trying to figure out the fastest way to clear out of there. Just like he’d done after the kiss, dashing off, claiming he had to start packing.

“That last letter you wrote me,” Stiles said. Derek stopped, his back to him, shoulders tensed. “I didn’t reply. I’m sorry. I was a stupid kid; I didn’t know what to say.”

“I never knew if you’d stopped talking to me intentionally,” Derek said. “I tried a couple times, and then I figured if you wanted to get in touch again, you would.”

And Stiles never had. At first, it really had been that he was busy; middle school had seemed like the most exciting and terrifying thing in the entire world, and trying to navigate its treacherous waters while keeping Derek updated had proved too difficult to maintain. Then that third unanswered letter—the last one Derek had written—had arrived. Stiles didn't remember much of it. But he could still see its closing line, a shaky scrawl that looked like it'd been added at the last minute.

_I’m sorry I made things weird._

The kiss _had_ made Stiles feel weird, in a way he hadn’t been able to articulate. It’d taken a few more years before he’d really understood why, and by then, Derek was a distant memory. By the looks of it, the reverse hadn’t been true.

“I used to wonder why you did it,” Stiles said.

Derek finished putting the hose back, twisted the water off and removed the nozzle, then finally turned back around. “Why I kissed you? Or why I wrote you that stupid letter?” 

Stiles touched his mouth again, watching as Derek’s gaze followed the movement. Things were a lot different now than they were back then. Odd lingering connection or not, they’d both grown into entirely different people. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really need an answer to either.”

“So what’s your real question?”

“I liked you back then,” Stiles said. “A lot. I hated that you left me, right when everything started getting really big and confusing. I know you couldn’t help it, but every time I wrote you, it reminded me that you weren’t around anymore.”

Derek’s lips flattened a bit. He nodded, slowly. “So it was easier to let it go.”

“I don’t think it’d ever be easy to let you go,” Stiles said. 

Derek’s mouth parted, his eyes searching Stiles’s.

“My question is,” Stiles said, taking a couple steps forward, then grimacing when that sent his sneaker splashing through one of Derek’s puddles.

“Sorry,” Derek said, but Stiles was already squelching the rest of the way over to him.

“So much for the seductive walk,” he said, close enough now for this to all go horribly wrong.

Derek hesitantly reached out, setting his hands on Stiles’s hips, then tightening his grip when Stiles reacted by leaning closer. “I remember the fountain, too.”

“The—shit, you heard that?”

“You’re pretty loud,” Derek said. “And hard to ignore.”

From most people, that might’ve seemed like an insult. The way Derek was looking at him, though, it felt like one of the nicer compliments Stiles had ever received.

“You weren’t here, though,” Stiles objected. “I remember, because that was the longest letter I wrote you. I think I transcribed half the town hall debate—the part I got to hear before my dad found me and kicked me out.”

“I remember,” Derek repeated, then cleared his throat. “I still have the drawing you sent.”

Stiles paused, his hands halfway up Derek’s chest—thick hair visible through the sheer fabric, as he’d guessed from his earlier vantage point—to his bare shoulders, which he’d been aching to touch for the last hour. The last month, if he was being honest. “Oh, the one of the fountain? God, I can’t believe you kept that. It’s gotta be barely recognizable.” 

“I liked it,” Derek said. “It made me feel like I was there with you.”

It was strange to look into eyes this familiar, belonging to someone Stiles hardly knew anymore. He slipped a finger under the strap of Derek’s still-damp tank top, testing to see if it was as absurdly tight as he’d thought. There really was no point to him wearing this flimsy excuse for a shirt.

“You never asked your question,” Derek said.

“Right,” Stiles said. He had a lot of them, too numerous to delve into now. When Derek decided to move back, had he known Stiles was still around? Why _had_ he returned? Was it for Laura, or was it his decision? And why had he ended up with a wet dream of a car, when he’d always been the practical one in their friendship?

For now, though, only one was pressing enough to ask. “Do you think it’s too late?”

“For what?” Derek asked.

“To try again.”

The first touch of Derek’s lips was hesitant, like it’d been all those years before. It was his answer—but a question, too, begun more than a decade ago.

This time, Stiles knew exactly how to respond.

“Okay,” he said after a while, setting a hand back on Derek’s chest but letting him chase his mouth for a few more lip-tingling moments. “You’ve gotten a lot better at that.”

“I should hope so,” Derek said, with a throaty chuckle that made Stiles feel warm all over.

“We should move out of the parking lot,” Stiles said reluctantly. “I’m not the only one with a balcony. And you should probably do something with your ridiculous car before anyone needs to back out of their spaces.”

“Not my car,” Derek said. He tangled his fingers with Stiles’s, dropping a very distracting kiss onto the tip of his nose.

“Not your—yes it is. You wash it every damn weekend.”

“It’s Laura’s,” Derek said. “I have a Camry. You probably haven’t seen it; Laura makes me park it out on the street so hers doesn’t get scratched.”

Stiles stared at him, processing that information. “Let me guess; she also makes you wash it for her?”

“It’s a trade-off,” Derek said. “She hates handling all the grocery shopping and apartment cleaning when I’m on shift, but she said she’d stop complaining if I spent an hour out here every Saturday. She claimed she was the one doing me a favor, but I haven’t been so sure about that.”

“She might’ve been right,” Stiles said, wondering if _everyone_ in the building—everyone but Derek—had been watching this whole thing unfold. “Wait, what kind of shifts do you work? Are you at the hospital?”

Derek cleared his throat again, looking oddly embarrassed. “No, I uh. I’m at the station. I work with your dad now. He makes a pretty great Sheriff.”

“Deputy Derek Hale,” Stiles said. That part really shouldn’t have come as a surprise; Derek had always been the one hanging off stories from the station. While Stiles snooped around in his dad’s files, dreaming up exciting new criminal-catching methods, Derek had stayed by the then-deputy’s side, asking boring questions about procedure and policy. “For fuck’s sake. I can’t believe my dad didn’t tell me you were back.”

Derek’s cheekbones took on that pink tint again. “He said he, uh. Doesn’t like getting involved in your romantic life anymore. But that if we ever did figure things out, he wanted us to both come over for dinner.”

“Well,” Stiles said. “Then I guess we should get back to figuring things out.”

It took 207’s extended, irritable honking to finally move them out of the parking lot. Stiles was the one who ended up with a sunburn, as it turned out. But he didn’t mind that much, not when it came with Derek in his apartment, smoothing aloe vera onto the back of his neck, and then playfully kissing his nose again before smearing the gel along his lips’ path.

The next Saturday morning, the parking lot was quiet and still. Stiles was out on his balcony, a mug of coffee in one hand, the other resting lightly on Derek’s knee.

“Derek, look,” he hissed, nodding at the silver SUV that 401 was attempting to very quietly unlock. Rookie move; should’ve parked on the street if she didn’t want to be seen. “I bet you anything she’s sneaking off to the casino again before her husband wakes up.”

Derek didn't lift his eyes from the thick book he was reading—some boring examination of the history of European conflicts, last Stiles had checked. He hummed in the back of his throat, though, then rested his hand on top of Stiles’s to show he was listening. 

Once 401 was safely on her way, revving the engine triumphantly as soon as she'd made it halfway down the block, Stiles drained the rest of his coffee. “Alright, I'm gonna take a shower.”

“Okay,” Derek said. He moved his hand and flipped a page of his book, still frowning in concentration at the dense, tiny text.

“You should join me,” Stiles said. “In fact, I think we should make that a habit for a while. It's about time you started making some serious strides in water conservation.”

“Honestly, Stiles,” Derek sighed.

But he set the book down.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/). And probably not hanging out on my balcony on Saturday mornings.


End file.
